


Stories About the Other Side

by habbue



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cute, I can't get enough of this ship, M/M, More Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/habbue/pseuds/habbue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlos realizes Cecil hasn't been anywhere "normal," he begins to tell him about the differences between Night Vale and the rest of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories About the Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh second fic! I still don't know how to write proper endings I guess. Anyway its my HC that this happens and I wanted to write it out so here ya go~!

Carlos had taken to spending most of his free time at Cecil’s apartment. It was spacious enough for two, and his bed was much more comfortable than the government-standard cot back at the lab. He didn’t really have a place of his own; there was no point in spending the money when he had a small living space at the lab, even if that living space was a bed in a room full of other beds, the only privacy being the cloth dividers that hung from the ceiling, somewhat like hospital curtains. There was a kitchen, too, but it was small and to be shared among the scientists. Then there was the bathroom, a row of sinks along the wall facing a row of toilet stalls across the other. A handful of shower stalls were in a back room, but that was the extent of the amenities.

It got the job done, but it wasn’t preferable. When he started to see Cecil, you know, as more than just an acquaintance or even a friend, it was just the natural progression of things. Right now he was somewhere between being a very frequent houseguest who spent a lot of nights in a row and moving in as a permanent tenant. At this point, though, it was getting hard to tell the difference.

Even when he wasn’t working late at the lab, Carlos stayed up into the wee hours of the morning. His circadian rhythm was all screwed up thanks to spending so many nights working on experiments that it was nearly impossible for the scientist to fall asleep before two or three a.m., though it usually wound up being closer to five before he crashed. Most of the nights when he stayed up obscenely late, he ended up falling asleep right on the couch as Cecil went to bed earlier than that. He always woke up in the morning with a blanket covering him, tucked in protectively on both sides. Every morning it brought a smile to his face.

Most nights after the radio show (which Carlos had become accustomed listening to like a traditional ritual by this point) Cecil wasn’t exactly tired enough to sleep, so he’d curl up on the couch beside his perfect and wonderful boyfriend and watch as the man read books, when they were working. Sometimes there was conversation but most of the time it was cuddling as Carlos read and Cecil slipped into a light sleep, before waking up approximately 45 minutes to an hour later and retreating to bed (but not before peppering Carlos’s perfect face with kisses).

Tonight was apparently a night for conversation. Even though he was trying to read, the scientist didn’t mind at all if Cecil asked questions or wanted to talk for a bit. Books could always wait. He was a fast reader in any case, and it didn’t take him very long to get through a passage or chapter. Tonight’s choice was a bit dry, anyway; he liked to vary his choices by switching off between fiction and non-fiction. He had just finished a very intriguing and psychological fiction novel, and was now reading one of his more scientific non-fiction books about ancient civilizations. It was usually a pretty interesting topic, but his mind couldn’t concentrate on that tonight.

“Why do all the people in those pictures have such square teeth?” Cecil asked curiously, looking over Carlos’s shoulder at the illustrations of an ancient Asian civilization. It seemed like an odd question, but Night Vale was a very odd place. There were a handful of people that had sharpened teeth like Cecil, so it wasn’t exactly the norm. Hell, he’d seen people in the town with completely rounded teeth; Carlos had learned a while ago that in Night Vale, if you think things are strange, they can and will become stranger.

“People who don’t live in Night Vale don’t have sharp or round teeth, or any other shape but square or rectangle for that matter,” he explained, glancing down at the curious blonde head that was perched on his shoulder, his dark eyes scanning over the paper in front of him with a bit of a fervor. “Not naturally, any way.”

“They all have rectangular or square teeth?” he responded, eyebrows raised at the thought. It brought a bit of a chuckle to Carlos and he turned the page, smiling. 

“Yeah. It’s pretty boring if you think about it. Variety would be nice.”

Cecil smiled a bit as well, though he still looked shocked to learn something new about other places. Carlos knew that the blonde had left Night Vale before, but the European countries he had described on his show weren’t any countries he’d seen on any map. Even so, he was much more apt to believe the stories now, since he had been in the city for over a year. The abnormality was starting to grow on him and feel normal.

“Tell me more about what it’s like where you’re from,” Cecil asked, looking up at the scientist with curiosity blooming in his eyes. Carlos sat back on the couch a bit, setting the book down in his lap, open faced, before dog-earring a page and shutting it before setting it gently on a side table. There was certainly a lot of ground to cover if he was going to explain the differences between Night Vale and the rest of the world.

“Where should I begin?” he pondered aloud, trying to figure it out. “Oh! Well...dogs and humans are allowed in dog parks,” he started off, keeping his voice low. It didn’t matter much, since the Sheriff’s Secret Police probably could tell whenever someone even thought about the dog park, but it made him feel a little bit better anyways. All Cecil responded with was a sharp intake of breath, eyes widening at the thought.

“…Seriously?” he asked, clearly very shocked, and Carlos could only smirk. 

“Seriously. There are no hooded figures either. Well, not like…here. Sometimes kids hang around wearing hoodies, but they’re human,” Carlos said, rambling a little bit but realized his tangent wasn’t adding much, so he dropped it and continued with something else.

The more Carlos spoke, the more intrigued and surprised Cecil seemed to be. The blonde nearly was begging for more information, to learn more about where Carlos was from and what people did. That was where the two men, from seemingly two different sides of a normality spectrum, met in the middle. Carlos was a scientist and Cecil was a journalist; the two professions were completely opposite and yet there was one thing that they both craved: information.

“Let’s see, what else,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully and a bit comically, fingertips brushing against his unkempt five o’clock shadow. “Librarians aren’t evil, and are usually nice old ladies who help you find books,” he said, the library being the next thing that popped into his head. He’d never seen what a Night Vale librarian looked like, so they very well could be old women as well, but Carlos didn’t want to chance running into one after what he’d heard of the attacks.

Cecil gasped again, this time much louder, and he sat up straight. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” he exclaimed, looking very surprised. Carlos laughed a bit at his boyfriend’s exclamation, actually getting a kick out of all of this. 

“Nope. My grandmother works as a librarian in her retirement, actually, and the last I’ve heard she hasn’t mauled anyone yet.” The blonde radio host looked faint, almost, and laid his head back down on Carlos’s shoulder, though he prodded for more stories, more information.

“Elementary students definitely aren’t allowed to have guns for their safety,” he added, “nor cans of nerve gas.” The idea was quite strange, but apparently the children were very well trained. Carlos tried to imagine if some of his unruly younger cousins or nieces and nephews were required to carry the large, automatic pistols that Night Valian children had. It was a terrifying thought, considering he knew how they roughhoused.

Cecil was surprised, yet again, and it didn’t look like he’d be able to open his eyes any wider. “But how do they protect themselves?” he asked. “What if feral dogs attacked, like here? I know Mayor Pamela Winchell said that they were plastic bags, but…”

Laughing, Carlos stroked the back of Cecil’s head. “There aren’t any feral dog OR plastic bag attacks on elementary schools,” he said, but thought about the people that did attack elementary schools. They were the ones with pistols. The man’s brow furrowed, but shook it off. He didn’t want to talk about negative things like that. Things like that didn’t happen in Night Vale.

“Where you’re from sounds…strange,” Cecil yawned, stretching his arm out a bit as he sat up, covering his mouth with the other hand. “I’m glad you decided to come here.” With that, the blonde stood up, kissed the scientist on the forehead and retreated to his bedroom, shutting the door just so it almost closed but didn’t, leaving it barely ajar.

As he himself got ready to head to the bed, the realization was slowly dawning on Carlos that maybe the words “weird” or “abnormal” were completely arbitrary…completely subjective. To Cecil, places like where he was from was strange. To Carlos, Night Vale had been strange at first, but now it was starting to seem a little more normal. The smaller things were, of course. Things like the helicopters and the hooded figures, the everyday stuff that would be very strange to a newcomer, but not to him anymore.

Both places had their downsides. Other cities had murderers and thieves…Night Vale had glow clouds and street cleaning day. Both places were fundamentally different, just like the spectrum that separated Carlos and Cecil, but they met in the middle. Both places had their problems, and both had their wonders.

Carlos turned off the lights and walked across the apartment to the bedroom door, pushing it open gently and stepping inside. Everything was quiet and still and dark, save for the light from the beautiful moon. It spilled through the half-shut blinds in the window, creating horizontal, luminescent stripes across the bed and Carlos smiled as he gazed down at the man wrapped up in the covers, the man that the scientist could only describe as the wonder that was keeping him in Night Vale.


End file.
